|
LEARNING GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON NATURE "Are
you not in error
If these were merely the cultural attitudes of that day, which Jesus did
not share, shouldn't he have been correcting rather than reinforcing these
perceptions? Didn't he know that
statements like these would be used to fuel the destructive outlooks of many who
would abuse nature? If modern
thought would label Jesus as being foolish, I think it is time that we take a
closer look at the presumptions that have gone into modern thought and determine
who it is here that is lacking discernment.
In John's gospel, Jesus is first introduced to the reader with this
description: "through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has
been made". (John 1:3) Try to
grasp what is happening in these passages.
The one who made everything and called it "good" during the
account of the creation is now speaking poorly of creatures within that
creation. What happened?
The Maker of all things appears to have withdrawn his hearty endorsement
of nature and now refers to it when he needs to illustrate something as a bad
example. Between the time when
Scripture says "it was good" (Gen.
1:25) and the time when Jesus said, "do
not give dogs what is sacred" (Mat. 7:6) came the Fall of man and the subsequent curse upon the
land. This corruption of the
original creation can be better understood through Jesus' choice of metaphors
when he described the God's kingdom as a field which in which an enemy had
planted weeds. (Mat. 13:24-32) This makes
it apparent that not all that we see in nature today can be considered as part
of God's original "good" creation.
We see nature from a human perspective.
God sees it as part of the bigger picture.
Too often we project our own perspectives upon God and assume that he
reasons like we do. Because people
feel God is absent from the world, they get possessive about his creation for
him.
The error in that point of view can be seen in the following
illustration. For a decade, my wife
and I lived in a suburban neighborhood on a third of an acre.
She loves flowers, herbs and English country gardens.
So over the years we transformed a suburban lawn into a major work of
biodiversity and beauty. There was color and symmetry, fragrance and texture.
It provided a place of refuge where creatures could find food, water and
shelter.
After we moved to the country, we drove by the house to see how the new
owners were appreciating the work of our hands.
We found that the vines and shrubs, the trellises and fencing had all
been cut down. The new owners'
image of how to use the land was totally different than ours had been.
They had taken possession of the land and destroyed "the
garden."
Of course these things were to be expected.
A new family wants to have their home reflect their own character and
needs. But people look at nature
from that same possessive point of view. They
try to speak to others for God, assuming that God thinks like they do.
They reason that God created nature just as we find it in the
"undisturbed" areas of the world: the North American old growth
forests; the rain forests of South America and New Guinea; the Serengeti Plains;
the Alaskan wilderness. It is
argued that these unaltered "natural" habitats should stay just the
way we find them. The
"balance" which God has created in nature should not be changed. Like
the garden in the suburbs, people look at the beauty in nature and project their
emotions on God.
While protecting the environment is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, the
Bible makes it clear that nature, as we know it, has changed considerably since
it was given to us in Eden. A
scriptural perspective of nature needs to include the fact that today's balance
of nature, even in those "pristine" areas, has lost the harmony of its
original state. By Maurice Hamel 8C122900 www.healingtheland.org |